Birding

Are You Going to the New York Birders Conference?

September 16, 2013 by Corey 2 Comments

The first weekend in November will see birders from all over the Empire State descend on Long Island for the 66th Annual Meeting of the New York State Ornithological Association (NYSOA). Billed as The New York Birders Conference, the weekend-long meeting, hosted by the Queens County Bird Club, will feature great field trips, workshops, and a keynote speaker that 10,000 Birds readers will undoubtedly recognize – James Currie!

Not only that, but there are a host of great workshops and presentations on tap. Want to learn to digiscope? Clay Taylor from Swarovski Optik will be leading both a workshop and a field trip – come learn from the best! Concerned about climate change and birds? Check out Kim Bostwick’s presentation – word is that it is excellent! Interested in local bird status and distribution? Bob Dieterich will be doing a presentation on the history of the Queens County Christmas Bird Count and Doug Gochfeld will be doing a presentation on predicting what birds will likely be next to be added to the New York State checklist. And this is only a taste of what will be happening in a bird-and-birding-full weekend!

Based at the Long Island Marriott Hotel and Conference Center in Uniondale, the conference, scheduled for 1 November – 3 November, is timed perfectly for late fall migration and at the leading edge of rarity season, so the field trips should be excellent. If you have family members who are not birders the location of the conference makes getting into Manhattan a breeze, so you can keep them busy while you are paying attention to birds!

My good friend and frequent birding buddy Seth Ausubel has been the driving force behind bringing the NYSOA annual meeting to Long Island for the first time in years and he is making sure that the conference is as excellent as it possibly can be. As a member of both the Queens County Bird Club and the New York State Ornithological Association I can say that both organizations are excellent and with the number of people working on this conference it is going to be great!

So sign up! Right now! Don’t delay!

New York

Written by Corey

Corey is a New Yorker who lived most of his life in upstate New York but has lived in Queens since 2008. He's only been birding since 2005 but has garnered a respectable life list by birding whenever he wasn't working as a union representative or spending time with his family. He lives in Forest Hills with Daisy and Desmond Shearwater. His bird photographs have appeared on the Today Show, in Birding, Living Bird Magazine, Bird Watcher's Digest, and many other fine publications. He is also the author of the American Birding Association Field Guide to the Birds of New York.

2 Comments

Pat ODonnell September 16, 2013 at 11:11 am
That sounds awesome! Having grown up in the Empire State, I wish I could come up from Costa Rica to go to it.
Donna September 18, 2013 at 10:42 am
It is going to be awesome! And, I don’t say “awesome” every day. There’s something for everybody. Personally, I’m excited about hearing Kim Bostwick, from Cornell, talk about conservation. Kim has gained fame from her manakin research, but in her travels around the world she has also observed significant changes in birds and their habitats. So, she will be talking about conservation in the sense of ‘what kind of world will we be leaving for our children’, but with the expertise of an evolutionary biologist who has done research the world over. A unique perspective.